Part 9: American Girls

"And then I told him that I was fluent in six demon languages, and I could read Y'vharrnal. So now he's going to hire me as a translator when school starts up again." Dawn had a thick binder open in front of her, chewing on the end of a pencil while she worked.

She and Buffy sat beneath a crimson-leaved tree, playing Frisbee with Emma. And taking their sweet time about it, too, Spike thought malevolently. He caught their concerned, slightly bemused gazes and looked down to find that he'd clenched his fists at his sides. He folded his arms across his chest instead.

"That's cool," Buffy told Dawn. "I think one of the kids at the youth center is half Y'vharrnal. You should come by sometime; maybe help him with his college application essays."

Surreal. Simply surreal. They were more sisters now than he'd ever seen before, complementing one another easily and without rancor. This oblique torture they'd devised for him seemed, ironically, to have soothed that ever-present tension between them. How precious. He wanted to kill something.

Finally Emma collapsed dramatically across their laps. Dawn put her notes into her backpack, giggling as Emma slobbered over her oversized CWRU sweatshirt. Buffy murmured mushy nonsense and batted her gently away. They rose as one, sweet-smelling of grass stains and seasons changing. He withstood their chorus of goodbye kisses, and didn't wait until he reached his apartment to call L.A.

Angel grunted into the phone. "I'm going to stop accepting calls from this area code."

"What are you on about?" Spike jabbed elevator buttons at random and then began pacing the tiny square of floor.

"Let's just say I'm aware that you and Buffy have renewed your acquaintance."

"Yeah? Checking to see that I still got my soul?"

"You called me, Spike. Just like Buffy has. Repeatedly. For the past two weeks."

Spike froze. "What?"

"You didn't know? Spike, I just had to fax over written proof of your health benefits."

"My what?"

"Benefits," Angel said irritably. "Before that it was whether you'd been offered counseling to help deal with your new 'circumstances' - counseling, Spike; she was serious - and before that -"

"Right, whatever. Look, I want to come home."

Angel's version of a laugh. "It's Cleveland, Spike, not summer camp. What the hell is going on there?"

"They won't leave me alone! Every time I turn around they're there, all smiling and happy and I'm about to pop both their heads off like wine corks."

"Spike, we discussed this before you left. You said -"

"I know what I said. How was I to know they'd turn psychotic? They're stalking me, the silly bints. I can't get away from them!"

A new note entered Angel's voice. "Are they there now?"

"Here? No. They don't come into the building."

"Uh-huh. Are they interfering with the job?"

"Hell, no. You think I let them anywhere near that business?"

"Do they invade your privacy? Threaten you in any way?"

"Now you're just being absurd. They're little girls."

An audible sigh. "Then what, exactly, do they do?"

"That sticky-fingered sneak Dawn got my cell phone number, and they call me. And I don't answer but it doesn't help. For Christ's sake, today we all went to the dog park and this weekend they brought me tickets to see Victory Flag at the Odeon. See, they know. They trap me, always just 'coming along' or picking spots where I can't very well boot them out on their arses."

"So basically you're telling me...they want to hang out."

Spike swore and strode out of the elevator. Was this even his floor? "No! They're plotting something, the two of them."

"You do realize how insane you sound, don't you? I'm just asking out of curiosity."

"I should have known you'd be no bloody help at all," Spike grumped. Emma bounded past him as he entered the apartment.

"Has the Mencius nest been destroyed?"

Spike rooted through the refrigerator, came up with a lone bottle of Japanese beer. He took a long swallow before answering. "Soon."

"Look, maybe I can send a delegation from Personnel -"

Spike wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Mencius is the most powerful line after our corrupt little gene pool. Your three-piece-suit sweeper teams won't cut it."

"Then I don't know what to say. Look, maybe you should just wait them out. Believe me, Spike, you have an infinite capacity for driving people away."

He drained the beer. "Thanks."

But sure as shit the next night they appeared, coincidentally slipping into his corner booth at Circo's just as his informant departed. Buffy was clearly impressed. "I haven't been somewhere this nice since our dad took us out," she enthused.

"Which was like, 1997," Dawn informed Spike. He glared at her. She seemed oblivious. "They have a cigar bar here," she observed, wrinkling her little nose. "You're not going to smoke one, are you? 'Cause I will totally retch."

Buffy opened the menu. "Are they still serving dinner?" she asked him. He took a deep breath, wondered if he should start counting backward from ten. This, he realized, was why humans needed those ridiculous relaxation techniques - because other humans were so infuriating, especially when one couldn't drain them dry and go back to one's peaceful and private existence.

"I thought you had a job," he said peevishly.

Her eyes lit up. "I never gave you my card!"

Maybe he should start counting backward from a thousand.

"She's taking a some time off," Dawn told him, while Buffy rummaged in her purse. "Her boss was bugging her about vacation days piling up, and this way we can go to Six Flags before it closes for the season."

Buffy smiled a little self-consciously. "Because our lives just don't have the same level of adrenaline and mind-numbing terror that they once did."

"That's a shame." He ordered another drink while he waited for the check. After that first time, he'd wised up and managed not to share an entire meal with them. Just ten minutes here and there, even if it meant sacrificing a really nice rare steak in favor of ordering pizza back at his place.

"...So glad the storm finally broke," Dawn was telling Buffy. "It's been sweltering."

"Yeah, but you know when we get home that spot in the ceiling is going to leak all over, and then creepy Kyle from 3F is going to ask if we need his assistance -"

"What are you doing in Cleveland?" Spike interrupted.

Buffy broke off, staring at him blankly. "We live here."

"Don't get all paranoid, Spike," Dawn added. "We were here before you, anyway."

He closed his eyes briefly. "Yeah, I know. What I mean is, why here? You -" he pointed rudely at Buffy, "aren't a Slayer anymore. Why'd you have to find the only other Hellmouth in the Western Hemisphere?"

Buffy's expression sobered. "Oh. Yeah. Well...I don't have the super-strength, or even the backup witches or a stake-wielding carpenter. But I figured, hey. I've still got the moves, right? You don't just forget seven years of demon-dusting skills overnight. Really. I tried." She gave him a weak smile. "Guess slaying is hard-wired into me. So I thought I could help out. Do some good. Not on a professional scale, obviously, and to be honest I haven't had much opportunity -"

Spike let his disgust show. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Shut up, Spike," Dawn hissed. All Buffy said was, "I make a dent."

A few minutes later Buffy excused herself to go to the bathroom. Spike crooked a finger at Dawn. From across the table, she leaned in. "Now that dear Buffy is gone for the moment, let's you and me have a talk."

"Okay," she said, tearing apart a piece of bread and liberally coating it in olive oil.

“Spill, Bit.” It was the first time he’d used her nickname since he’d returned. “Tell your old pal Spike what Big Sis is cooking up.”

Dawn blanched. “Please don’t mention Buffy and cooking. There was…an incident.”

He ground his teeth and resisted the impulse to shake her silly. The girl always could drive him to distraction, in a manner that even Buffy couldn’t achieve. Well, fuck it. And fuck her. He didn’t have to put up with this bullshit anymore, from either of them.

"Enough," he said shortly. "You be straight with me now, else this game of yours is up for good. Got it?"

She kicked him under the table. "You don't have to get like that," she told him. "It's no big secret." Almost despite herself, she grinned, pleased. "You're family."

"I'm - what?"

"Family," Dawn repeated. "And we're gonna be here for you, no matter what. That's what family is for." She studied the menu again. "'Course, lately you're acting like mean old Aunt Edna instead of..."

She trailed off as Spike started to laugh. It wasn't a comforting sound. He laughed at her, his eyes hard and glittering and so terribly cold. He was still laughing when Buffy returned to the table.

"Spike...?" She looked to Dawn questioningly. Dawn shook her head and edged closer to her sister.

"What's so funny, Spike?"

He ran his hands over his face, half-expecting to feel tears of mirth. "You," he managed. "Family."

"Yes," Buffy replied. Why -"

"I get it now. All of it. Do you think you're clever? You think you've solved some great mystery, here? You ignorant, blind little girls. You perverse bitches. This - the kind of love you're talking about - you couldn't pull off in a million years of trying. You haven't the stomach for it."

He was shouting now. The other diners stared and Buffy and Dawn huddled shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the booth. The waitress hurried over with the check.

"Family," he said again. Unseeing, he emptied his wallet of cash and threw it on the table. "Jesus fucking Christ." Then he stood and left the restaurant.

***************************************

"Well," Buffy said weakly. "That was..."

"Intense," Dawn supplied.

"Yes. Definitely...intense."

They were walking to the parking garage on the next block. Even The Plan couldn't justify six dollars on valet parking. Dawn clutched the umbrella and pulled her sister under its meager shelter.

"So what's next?" Dawn asked glumly. "Serenading him at midnight with our critically acclaimed duet of 'Stuck on You'?"

Buffy pushed her wet hair from her face. "I don't...Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe we should just quit."

"I don't know," Dawn mused. "I mean, have you seen how twitchy he's been lately? Even before tonight's freak-out. I think he might be cracking."

"I think so too," Buffy muttered. "But this isn't what I had in mind."

"He's still here," Dawn pointed out.

And Buffy had to admit that much was true. "Yes, he is." She could see the dry concrete-y goodness of the parking garage in front of them. "Tell you what. Tomorrow we'll -"

Her next words were cut off as something leaped into their path, swiping a massive hand across Buffy's face and knocking the umbrella from Dawn's grip. Dawn screamed and jumped back, fumbling with her bag. Buffy adopted a defensive stance and set her chin.

"You know," she said, "I was almost starting to miss you guys." The vampire bared his fangs, in that universal signal for 'Hello, I'm going to eat you now!' Buffy beckoned him nearer. "Stake, stake," she murmured under her breath.

"Aarrgh!" Dawn tossed a hairbrush and a box of Altoids onto the sidewalk as she scrabbled at the bottom of the bag. The vampire lunged.

Buffy deflected him with a high kick he didn't see coming. It didn't do any damage, though, and he came at her with fury added to the bloodlust. She parried with a series of defensive moves that she'd had to brush up on since becoming the Extremely Ex-Chosen One. "Dawn!"

"Yes!" Dawn tossed her the stake and moved behind the vamp. He paid her little notice, until Dawn swung the umbrella into his side. Hard. Growling, he turned to her.

Buffy buried the stake in his back. A moment of absolute stillness, and she was terrified that she'd lost her touch, that she'd merely wounded him. Dawn waited, saucer-eyed, as well. Then he exploded in a cloud of choking dust. Dawn stared at Buffy.

"That was great," she said at last.

Buffy was panting with exertion, and she felt like she'd done something funny to her hamstring during that kick. "You know, it kind of was."

"We double-teamed him!" Dawn's voice rang with excitement. "It was Summers Smackdown 2004! Excellent!"

Buffy found herself grinning in return. "Stupidest thing he'd ever heard, huh?"

Picking up the umbrella, Dawn tugged Buffy along. She slung an arm around her sister's shoulders. "Spike doesn't know what he's missing," she said fondly. When they got to the car Dawn offered to drive, but Buffy declined.

Rain streaked the windshield as she slowly made her way through the slick and oily streets. The West 44th bridge had just reopened, she recalled, proud of herself. Old-fashioned slayage and not having to take the expressway home. On a roll, Buff.

She wasn't broken or beaten down after all. She could do stuff. And she could stand by Spike, stand up for him, stand up to him. This game of emotional chicken with Spike was tiring but worth it. She wasn't going to give up on him. It wasn't about being a lover or even just a friend. It was about being there. Not the prettiest words, she decided, but she'd work on something more eloquent in case he ever asked. There was time.

She wasn't going to give up on him, she repeated to herself. For the first time in maybe ever, someone wasn't going to give up on Spike. She smiled, the tiniest bit, at the thought.

And then she frowned because the steering wheel wasn't doing what it was supposed to.

The car was spinning, spinning, and she heard Dawn's terrified cry beside her as the landscape around them whirled. She dredged up every bit of instruction she'd ever gotten in Driver's Ed, and came up with fight the turn so she did, wrenching the wheel with all of her might and it wasn't enough. She wasn't enough anymore because there was nothing; no resistance in her hands or traction beneath the tires. Buffy grabbed Dawn and pulled her down as the ruthless steel of the bridge barrier rose up to meet them. The brakes screeched but didn't slow their momentum. She still had one hand on the wheel and one hand on Dawn, and thoughts fired in her brain, faster than she could process.

On a roll, Buff./They say the third time's the charm.../Dawn shouldn't be here. This isn't the place for her. And finally, as the blackness engulfed everything, even the hateful crunching collision of metal -

This is how ordinary people die.

Part 10: In That Rich Earth A Richer Dust Concealed

Twelve hours and eighteen minutes.

That was the length of time between the first unanswered ring and the moment Spike came barrelling through the double doors of the hospital. During that time, he discovered, there had been intubations and surgeries; the careful but impersonal cutting of clothes from slender young bodies; the injection of drugs and the removal of broken glass embedded in skin.

And, of course, there had been the phone calls. All ignored. The first (minute one) had come as he'd pulled up in front of his building. He saw it was a local number, swore, and turned the ringer off. Those two again, probably standing in the lobby of a movie theater, wanting him to hand them tissue during some deplorable chick film. Suddenly he had no desire to enter his apartment. He started the car again and headed for the nearest dive bar.

The third call (hour two, minute nine) had come as he sat at a sticky shadowed table, open lighter in one hand and the concert tickets they'd given him in the other.

He thought he might kill them. 'And we're gonna be here for you, no matter what.' If they'd devoted everything in their power, they could not have come up with an idea so cruel, so precisely painful, so spectacularly destined for failure. It would have been funny, really, if it wasn't so pathological.

He lit the tickets on fire and tossed them into the ashtray.

The fourth call (hour six, minute thirty-two) came as he was methodically butchering several proud representatives of the Mencius clan.

Most of the blood on his hands was his own, but he'd come to accept that. Humans had such tender flesh, easily breakable. And as soon as that floated unbidden through his mind he cursed himself for going all lyrical during an otherwise marvelous fight.

The seventh call (hour ten, minute nineteen) had come while he was sprawled clothed and facedown in bed. The bottle of Maker's Mark he'd taken off the Mencius and what he suspected were broken ribs sent him willingly into oblivion.

Many nights he dreamed of Buffy, of soft sinuous limbs tangled in his own cold ones. In the dreams he was always dead. A vampire, like before. Always. Tonight, though, she didn't come.

He woke up when the sun slanted through the blinds and onto his face. Emma nudged him, impatient for her breakfast. But the first thing he felt was his cell phone, poking uncomfortably against his thigh. He'd fallen asleep with the damn thing still in his pocket. Sitting up, he took it out and stared blearily at the frantically blinking text on the screen.

And now he sat in a hard plastic chair, Angel leaning over him. "Did you get your rocks off, boy? Did you hurt her enough? She's just lying there, now. Can't fight back. Why don't you have at her?"

Angel had flown in on the firm's Gulfstream but had only been able to pace the waiting room floor, powerless. It had been Spike appointed as their steward through this silent and suffering journey; Spike who numbly found himself answering questions and outlining medical histories, while at every moment sick terror churned in him.

Angel's hand clamped down on his neck. "What a waste you turned out to be."

Spike shook him off and he'd walked away then, sparing Spike one contemptuous glance before he left. The hospital staff swarmed around in his wake.

They handed him papers to sign, pages about 'consent' and 'resuscitation' and other things he refused to read. And in stark typeface, below the blank line for his signature, the words NEXT OF KIN.

"Family," he mumbled, as someone handed him a pen.

At one point he found himself in a cluttered office, seated across from a man with kindly eyes. It was strange to be the one in charge. The one who mattered. So he tried to listen as the man explained the nature of countrecoup brain injuries, the Glasgow Outcome Scale, the ten levels of cognitive functioning.

"There will have to be decisions made," the man told him, "about when to terminate care -"

Spike got up then. "Nobody fucking touches her." Out in the hall, they told him he could see Dawn. He stood in the doorway to her room for a moment, finding it suddenly difficult to move. She looked a mess. She'd been lucky, they said, but it didn’t seem so as he took in the splint on her right leg, the cast covering her left, the bruises tainting her chalky skin. As he watched, she stirred in her sleep and made a faint, wretched sound.

This is the way my world ends, he thought. Not with a bang, but with their whimpers.

He'd been at her side for perhaps an hour when she finally opened her eyes. He reached for a smile and found one. “Hello, my Bit. How are you feeling?”

“It hurts.”

He swallowed. “I know, pet. You’ve been banged around good and proper. Had me worried there.” One tentative, trembling hand alit on her bandaged arm. “But you’ll be fine. Doctors said you’ll be fine.”

“What happened?” She arched into his touch blindly and it was a struggle not to weep in her arms.

“Car accident. You and Buffy were on the overpass, do you –"

Her pretty eyes went big and aghast, and then she was wailing at him. "It wouldn't stop, the car just wouldn't and Buffy tried...where is she? Where's Buffy?"

He watched in alarm as she twisted herself up in the sheets, jostling her cast and coming dangerously close to dislodging the IV in her arm. "Shhh. Shhh, sweetheart. You're going to hurt yourself. Please, don't cry. Don't cry." Oh, he'd always been undone by her tears.

When he went to still her she suddenly pushed him away.

"You! I hate you! You hurt us - I remember what you said - get away from me! I hate you!"

"Calm down, Dawn. I know. I know you do but please, you have to calm down or else they won't let me come back, understand? They'll make me leave and not come back." It was too awful to threaten her with this but he didn't know what else to do; hadn't known what to do since the moment he set foot in this building. He should be more of a man about it, should be bearing up stoically in the face of these latest casualties.

But they were his girls. And so small.

Her bare panic at his words made something twist in his gut. "I'll stop," she whispered.

"Good girl. So brave you are. Listen to me, Dawn. I don't want to bother you with this, I know you're not well but we have to talk. About Buffy."

Tension stretched between them, and then she nodded.

"Buffy's not - the doctors say she isn't going to wake up. Say it's only a matter of time before it's over. You get what I'm telling you?"

Dawn gasped and jerked uncontrollably. But he was there, and he held her steady. He edge the chair closer so he could cradle her bent head in his arms. "It should have been me," she sobbed.

"Never, pet. Not how it works, not what anybody would have wanted. It's a blessing, Dawn, that you're healthy and intact, or getting there. You're a blessing."

She fought for composure. "That's not what they'll think. You know," she said unsteadily, and Spike did. He remembered those sideways glances from the Scoobies three years ago, when they thought she wasn't looking. But she'd seen them, every one.

"Don't give 'em another thought, Dawn. Just you and me here, and I love you, and I need your help. Please help me. I don't know what the right thing is. Must have gotten some sort of off-brand soul 'cause I'm having all manner of thoughts and none of them seem wrong."

Dawn's dull gaze sharpened. "What thoughts?"

"I want to get her back for you. All of her. But Willow tried that once and it didn't go swimmingly, did it? Stole from Buffy what she'd earned and tore us all up in the meantime. And you weren't asked, when you had more right to speak than any of them. So I'm asking you."

Her voice was hard and brittle. "She's not dead yet, Spike."

"I know that. But the doctors -"

"Fuck them." Dawn shifted abruptly, wincing, and brought a hand up to her stomach. "They don't know, Spike. She was the Slayer, and I was a great big ball of energy, and you can bet that's not on our charts. They don't know anything. What are you going to do?"

"Whatever I can. Whatever it takes. Got a plan, and if it doesn't work I'll just tear up this dimension and the next 'til I find one that does."

Dawn leaned back, her exhaustion evident. "Good. You do that. Bring her back to us."

He brushed the hair back from her face. "You certain?"

"Yes."

"Guess it's unanimous, then." He dropped a kiss to her cheek. "Will you be okay for a bit? I don't want to -"

"Go. Hurry."

He turned away but when he reached the door she called him back. "Spike?"

"Yeah?"

"Like you said - whatever it takes. A trade, if that's what they want. It'd be better than going through life as the consolation prize again."

There was no answer for that, none that she would receive, at least. He rested his forehead against the cool metal of the door. "Sleep now, Dawn."

When he stepped back into the hallway Angel was there. "Don't you dare. Don't even think of it."

Spike shoved past him. "I want a sit-down with the Powers. Make it happen."

"Since when do I have them on speed-dial?"

"Since you inherited that law firm from hell, though of course you never realized it. What do you think I've been doing down in that basement, playing shuffleboard? Been going through the old files. Plenty of interesting tidbits I discovered."

"Such as?" Angel was intrigued despite himself, striding alongside Spike as he stalked the corridors of the hospital.

"The Powers got duped by Wolfram & Hart. More than once. Got themselves harnessed, no better than ponies at a petting zoo, with the Senior Partners holding the reins. So I'm telling you: you call them, and they'll come. They won't like it, but they will." Spike turned to him. "It's all about restoring the balance. They're desperate to even things up."

"Duped? The Powers aren't exactly natural-born suckers."

"The firm used them, played them. Sleight of hand, to make them think they were keeping order in the universe when really Wolfram & Hart was just pointing them in the right direction - or, wrong, as the case may be - and telling them what to do. Plaguing an entire village became 'preventing the dissemination of powerful magic.' Striking a mother and her unborn child dead turned into 'saving the world from the next dark messiah.' See where I'm going, or do I need a dry-erase board?"

"How come this is the first I've heard of it?"

"Maybe because it wasn't you poking about among the dust and creepy-crawly dead things. Or maybe because the Powers weren't exactly going to raise their collective hands and bellow 'Oi! Over here! Owe you one!' But they do. And now it's time to collect."

"Whatever it is you're planning, it won't work. The Powers - they give you what you want, but not how you want it. One way or another you'll regret this."

"I know."

"You don't know, or you wouldn't even be considering it. Spike - what happened to Dawn and Buffy happens to millions of people every day. It's tragic and senseless and beyond unfair, but it's human. It's the risk of living."

"Don't care. The Powers got a debt outstanding. And if you're thinking of your boy, that's over and done with. You couldn't give him a better life than he has now."

"Not another word about Connor. I've accepted his fate, just as you ought to accept hers."

Later, much later, Spike thought that they had never hated each other as much as in that moment. "You walk away. I fight for what's mine. That's always been the difference between us."

Angel's laugh scraped through the hall. "Fighting for what's yours? Is that what you call it? You fool. You're raping her all over again."

When he was gone, Spike slipped outside for a smoke. He needed fortifying for what came next. He'd always been so weak. Weak monster, weak man. But at least he had a purpose. Armed with marching orders from Dawn, the general of his heart, he turned back to the ICU.

He couldn't get close to Buffy, could only stand at the thick plastic window and stare at the monitors and tubes and wires. Hard to believe there was a body buried under all those death-trappings. A bit of her golden hair spread on the pillow beckoned him, as did one impossibly narrow gauze-wrapped wrist. He closed his eyes and inhaled the stench of antiseptic.

"Hello, love."

No answer, of course. Still, he clung to the hope that she was there, somewhere; suspended patiently in stasis while he ran around looking for miracles. So he pressed shaking fingertips against the window and continued.

"It's a terrible thing, to see you like this. You were always so strong, weren't you? Slayer or no. I was proud, you know, for sending you away all those times. I just never thought this was how you'd leave.

"Won't let that happen, though. Angel's fussing but he'll do what I ask. There's a debt there, too. And he's curious. Can't help but like the idea of having the Powers under his thumb. If he's got any brains he'll milk it for a while yet."

He was stalling, he knew. Everything he wanted to say sounded too much like goodbye. Regret choked him, stilling his tongue. The tirades and hunger-poetry of his past had deserted him; he was left with broken endearments and pleas to deaf ears.

He wanted to tell her that every beat of his heart shamed him; that the traitorous life he harbored would be hers if he could only will it so. He wanted to tell her that he had never been as staggered as when she'd demonstrated, heedless and defiant, that he was cherished despite himself; Buffy and Dawn both bound to sabotage his shallow-and-slipping indifference. He wanted to tell her that believing her dead, for even that short time in the baking, rapacious sun of California, was a wound that had never healed. He wanted to tell her that her capacity for love was a magnificent and terrible thing, as deadly as any of her absent mythic strength. And that he accepted it only now, when she was so far from him, was a suitable punishment for his transgressions against such charity.

His speech, when it was finally delivered, was clumsy and plain. The words came in a torrent, unchecked; alien to him but oddly befitting regardless. He would not have changed a one.

"...And I just need you to stay here, just stay here for a second and listen, okay? Don't go. Because we can start over, you and me. You and me and Dawn, we'll be a family. I know how much you wanted that. You don't have to say it."

Strong arms encircled him from behind, holding him when he would have beat his hateful human fists against the glass. Angel. The words kept on.

"Please, you just have to...I remember what I said before but I'm ready now, I swear I am. It's been so long, Buffy, won't you –"

Language surrendered then, and he was bereft. Lost to what was surely his own selfish and craven desire, the wantingneedinganguish that had been imprisoned but now burst forth a thousandfold.

He was being pulled away. "It's been arranged," Angel murmured against Spike's skin. "Downtown, an hour from now. Come on, let's get you cleaned up."

Part 11: The Lights All Fried In Brightness

The short car ride downtown seemed interminable to Spike. "Can't this thing go any faster?" he demanded.

"If I say no, will you shut up? Be glad I'm even going along."

"Didn't ask you to, did I? Don't need any favors from you." But even Spike's customary resentment and needling was passionless; his voice was flat and dead. It was true enough that he hadn't asked that Angel accompany him to the meeting, but the stragetist in Spike - rusty though he was - recognized the wisdom of Angel's presence. He had more experience with the Powers; not exactly a sterling record of success but the old boy might have some helpful knowledge to impart. As long as he let Spike run the show.

"There's still time to stop this," Angel was telling him earnestly. So much for helpful knowledge. "Spike, diverting the natural course of things can only end badly. For everyone." His voice hardened. "You're blinded by guilt."

He was right, of course, and Spike was too far gone to even let that bother him. Remorse clawed at his heart, unrelenting, so different from what he'd felt since getting the soul, and yet the same. The pain: he remembered the pain. It had never been like this, though; never been so perfectly agonizing, not even when he'd woken up weeping on a cave floor in Africa. This...this tragedy had his name scrawled all over it, in bright letters the color of blood.

Since he'd heard the first droning boilerplate message from the hospital (but too late, always, too late to stop Doc from cutting Dawn and Buffy from diving off that tower and all the rest of it, years after for which he'd never atone) he'd replayed that night. Over and over, as if he could bid his imaginings into reality by sheer force of will. This time it didn't end with Spike sending them off with harsh words, abandoning them to their doom, his rejection still ringing in their ears until it was replaced by the sound of screams. This time he saved them.

He was jerked back to the present when Angel swung the car into a long circular driveway. "We're here."

Spike sat up in the passenger seat, looking around suspiciously. He'd expected an ancient cobwebby chapel, a warehouse, maybe some lately-realized mystical structure underneath Browns Stadium. Instead they'd pulled up in front of a gleaming modern office building.

"You sure this is the right place?" Spike muttered as they walked through the glass doors into the lobby.

"712 St. Claire Avenue. This is the address Eve gave me."

Spike snorted. "Eve. Yeah, she's trustworthy."

"This was your idea. These are the kind of people you're dealing with, and Eve's going to look like Mother Teresa once it's all over. Mark my words -"

Hidden from view as they waited in the elevator bank, Spike shoved him up against the wall. "Mark my words, Angelus. You've had your say, and now I'll have mine. Don't interfere."

Angel shoved back. "Do you think I want her to die? Do you think I'm ready to lose her? My God, Spike, I've had my fill of losing people. I just -" His anger seemed to flag, then. "I'm trying to keep from losing all of you. Do you understand? All of you."

The elevator dinged its arrival. Angel pulled away, and he and Spike rode to the penthouse in silence.

As they stepped out, a brisk middle-aged woman greeted them. "Good afternoon, gentlemen. May I offer you some coffee? Or...other refreshments?"

Angel waved a hand; Spike stuck his hands in his pockets and glared. The woman remained unfazed. With cool efficiency, she led them down an expansive hallway, escorting them into a sunny conference room and quietly closing the door as she left.

Someone was already there. Grinning, he quickly dropped his half-eaten doughnut onto a napkin. "Doug Sherman," he said affably as he rose, all suburban beefiness and sprinkles of powdered-sugar on his fingers. "Regional Branch Manager. Which one of you is Spike?"

Spike stepped forward, saying nothing. Angel took Doug's outstretched hand in his. "Thanks for meeting with us on such short notice."

Doug's grin didn't fade as he sat back down, gesturing for them to do the same. "Not at all. Quite a nice little city you got here. I'm from Rockford, originally. Gosh, where are my manners? The wife would have my head -" He gestured to the plate of pastries in the center of the table that he'd been plowing through when Angel and Spike walked in. "Have something, relax a bit. The room is booked for the rest of the day."

Spike couldn't help himself. "You're from the Powers That Be?" he asked incredulously. "You look like you ought to be coaching Little League."

"Oh, no," Doug answered seriously. "Season just ended. My little Brianna went all the way to the semi-finals." He beamed proudly. "She's got a swing you wouldn't believe -" He trailed off at Spike's black gaze. "Well, you didn't come here to listen to me brag, I'm sure. Let's get started, shall we?" He propped open a slim laptop and began punching keys. "Okay...on the agenda for today: the former Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers? Do I have that right?"

Spike nodded tightly. More typing.

"Ah," Doug said. "We have a whole database on her. I'm impressed. You should see this PowerPoint presentation - very moving." He stared at the screen for a few moments, then looked up. "Shame about how it's turned out, though. Young girl like that, her whole life ahead of her."

"I want her to live," Spike bit out. "I want her whole and right again, the way she was before. Make it happen."

"I'm afraid it isn't that easy," Doug replied. "There are consequences. Balances to be maintained."

"I know all about your balance," Spike said. "You guys got suckered by Wolfram & Hart. Years and years of doing their bidding and you didn't even know it. You're here now because you have to give something back. Fine. Give me back Buffy."

Doug sat back, rolling up his sleeves. "Look, I'm just a representative. Karmic customer service, for lack of a better term. The Powers are aware of the improprieties that occured during Wolfram & Hart's previous administration. In the interests of a continued, mutually beneficial relationship, they've agreed to begin negotiations on this matter. But let me get this out in the open: nobody gets nothing for free here. Understand?" Doug's expression remained pleasant and amiable.

"We understand," Angel put in. "What, exactly, can be done?"

"Believe it or not, the Powers do appreciate Buffy's work on their behalf. Her sacrifices have been recorded and reviewed by the appropriate commission."

"Good to hear," Spike snarled. "Now it's time for the Powers to pay up."

"The Powers have no problem restoring Buffy - in theory. In practice, however, it brings up rather a lot of thorny issues. What happened last night was purely in the human, earthbound arena. The Powers can't involve themselves every time a tragic accident occurs. If there were some bit of mysticism, some supernatural tinkering with the brake lines -"

"Yeah, she's human. Ordinary. Wasn't always, though, was she? So she's got a little goodwill stored up, I'm figuring."

Doug nodded. "You figure right. The Powers have authorized me to make what you'd call a settlement offer."

"What are the terms?" Spike demanded.

Smiling, Doug consulted the computer screen once more. "Well, she'll be made as she was before. With the strength she requires to fully recover from her injuries. Just as you asked."

Beside him, Angel stiffened. Spike closed his eyes.

Stupid, that he hadn't thought of this before. Stupid not to realize that this was as much about what the Powers wanted as what he did. And they wanted their Slayer back.

Buffy, smart bird that she was, had diffused her strength among the rest of the Potentials. Thousands of them around the world. By the end, there'd been none left for her. She certainly didn't seem to regret the loss. But her move had been unprecedented, unsanctioned, and Spike was certain that the Powers resented it - and her - on principle. This was their chance to have the last word.

He found himself, incredibly, looking to Angel for guidance. But the vampire stared fixedly ahead, offering nothing. This was on Spike's head, this choice. And Christ, it was harder than he expected. He was desperate for her, in any way, shape or form she took. But to force her back to that life...it had been a comfort to him, during this long lonely year, that she was a normal girl now, that she'd gotten what she'd earned so many times over.

"There's got to be another way."

"I'm afraid not. I'm sure you're familiar with the extent of her injuries; we're going to have a hell of a time repairing the damage as it is. Why, the last Slayer we had in a coma didn't wake up for -"

"I get it," Spike interrupted dully. Buffy, sweet, he thought, my love takes such a toll. He knew what his answer would be; had known as soon as the offer was made. And he'd worship her, from afar if need be, and watch over her as she took up the mantle again. She wouldn't be alone. That she might hate him after all of this was over, that he might lose her forever to his betrayal and her calling, was immaterial.

Doug surveyed him knowingly. "She was the best we'd ever seen."

"Yes," Spike replied. "She was." He felt old, all at once; old and human and terribly flawed. "Do it."

"Great. I think the Powers will be real pleased with this, real pleased. Now, as to the mechanics of her recovery, any preferences? We'll see what we can do..." Doug outlined scenarios while Spike felt himself drained, finished off. Sensing his weariness, Angel took over the mediations. Spike allowed his eyes to close briefly, allowed this day to recede for the moment. The sun was warm on his lids. He wanted to sleep.

And abruptly, in the midst of Angel and Doug's low-pitched discussion, he smelled Joyce.

It was her essence, that Spike had always vaguely considered all things welcoming and warm, but it was tuned up higher than Joyce's had ever been in life. The scent was pungent and determined, impossible for him to ignore although the other two men seemed unperturbed. Spike slowly sat back in his chair and looked up.

Sure enough, she was there; reflected in the spotless picture window across from him. And mother makes three. Joyce, what are you doing here?

He knew it wasn't her; the pose she 'd taken was from one of his memories of her, culled as if from a scrapbook. Leaning against something - the kitchen counter, perhaps? - she smiled at him in that way she had. Duly noting his mischievousness but not sending him on his way as she ought.

Spike thought, for a moment, that her visit was one of gratitude or reassurance; a sort of spectral pat on the back for a job well done. She was a pistol, always had been; swung a mean axe and comforted him in his lovelorn idiocy and even unwittingly let him goose Angel and Buffy, back when that was a more amusing pastime. But for all that, Joyce hadn't been much for unnecessary pomp, and this wasn't Joyce anyway, just his mind's amalgamation of her rememberance. He waited for some cryptic instructions but she remained silent, and after a while that made sense. So the muse was the message. He stared at her, hard. Her smile didn't dim.

Spike had never thought of himself as particularly brilliant. His best moments had resulted from hours upon hours of observation and methodical, halfway-subconscious sussing-out until, finally, it all just came together, a conflagration of synapses to create one single and precise insight. And in this manner he watched Joyce, while his mind worked, taking in bits of information and discarding them, her smile a beacon for his burned-out brain. He slowed, seized on one memory he couldn't shake. Joyce's smile widened.

"Fuck them." Dawn shifted abruptly, wincing, and brought a hand up to her stomach. "They don't know, Spike -"

He remembered the doctors telling him that she had only broken bones and bruises; he remembered his own almost-embarrassing pleasure at hearing that Joyce was out of the woods, and the blow of her unexpected death.

In the window, Joyce nodded approvingly. She winked at him, and faded from view.

"Dawn," Spike said.

And if nothing else had, Doug's reaction confirmed it for him. Angel turned to Spike in confusion, but abruptly, Doug's face, that had been so open and cheery before, became a mask of schooled indifference.

"What about her?" Angel asked.

"Dawn, too," Spike told Doug, eyes never leaving the other man. "She's part of the deal."

Doug began to put the laptop into his briefcase. "My report indicates that her condition is stable, and improving. Some scrapes, and she won't be running a marathon anytime soon."

"Is that a guarantee?"

Doug paused, gave Spike a surprisingly astute glance. "Nothing in life is guaranteed. You must have figured that out by now."

The rage built in him, fury at the knowledge that he was being taunted, toyed with. "She's part of the deal."

"I don't think so. Buffy is the former and future Slayer. Her duties - in the past, and those she has yet to perform - were sufficient to grant her a reprieve in this case."

"And Dawn was the Key. You stored bits of the universe up in a teenage girl, no thought to how she'd suffer. She's done right by you. Now you do the same for her."

Doug shook his head regretfully. "The monks operated on their own in that regard. Religious zealots," he said. "Can't trust 'em. At any rate, the junior Ms. Summers has been relieved of her Key status. Not to put to fine a point on it, but...she's meaningless to the Powers now."

Spike stood, placed his hands on the table. "She is not meaningless to me."

"Then perhaps we need to strike another deal." From his briefcase, Doug pulled out a contract. "I think you're acquainted with this particular arrangement...?"

Spike gave the sheet of paper a perfunctory once-over. You gotta be kidding me, he thought. Angel grabbed it out of his hands.

"You certainly don't have to do this," Doug shrugged. Encouragingly he added, "Why not just play the odds? She's young, strong. She'll probably be fine."

"Guess I'm just a greedy bastard. If she really is fine, then you win either way, don't you?"

"Indeed we do. The Powers have made certain of that."

Spike gestured to the contract now in Angel's white-knuckled grip. "Why?" Spike asked. There was more curiosity than anger in his tone.

"You amused the Powers. That doesn't happen very often. Of course, your career got off to a rocky start, but since then it's been one exciting episode after another. You're very fortunate, you know - to still have something left to trade. I'm sure Dawn will be grateful."

"No," Angel burst out, tossing the contract onto the floor. "Absolutely not."

"Yes," Spike told Doug. Angel dragged him to a corner of the room. Doug watched them with interest.

"Don't, Spike. It's a fool's bargain. They're manipulating you, it's what they do -"

"You think I don't know that? I'm starting to think they engineered this whole bloody mess, from the amulet on. Maybe even before. Hardly matters now, though." He caught Angel's gaze. "Dawn is on the line. You saw that wanker, saw how he acted."

"I don't care. This is an abomination. My God, isn't that soul of yours putting up a commotion right about now?"

Spike's crisp and icy eyes met his. "Soul is abstaining from this vote."

"You're dooming yourself. You must know that. Yourself and very likely them as well."

"I'm saving them."

"This is the very definition of wrong, William. It's -"

"You're hardly one to talk. You think you can buy justice with that fancy law firm of yours, but I'm thinking caveat emptor and all that rot. A bit of bad for a hell of a lot of good and you know all about that, don't pretend otherwise. I'm doing what I have to for them. I'll not have Buffy wake up in a world without her sister."

Angel regarded him with loathing. "Buffy will never forgive you for this."

"Buffy will know what to do, if it comes to that." He grinned recklessly. "No tears, Peaches. I was born for this moment." He turned back to the blank-faced Doug, who had retrieved the contract from the floor. "I'm ready."

"All right, then," Doug said agreeably. He pushed the piece of paper forward and handed Spike a pen.

"A life for a life?"

***************************************

Angel walked out of Buffy's room, unburdened of his tale but still furious. A woman he dimly recognized as one of the girls' doctors approached him. Jessica Lawrence, M.D., was sewed in flowing script above the breast pocket of her white coat. "An amazing recovery," she was saying, and Angel thought, you have no idea. "And the sister, too - she gave us a quite a scare earlier."

Angel stopped. "A scare?"

Dr. Lawrence smiled apprehensively. "Some internal bleeding that wasn't diagnosed immediately." A nurse stuck a chart in front of her and she initialed it quickly. "We discovered it, of course -"

The nurse made a sound of derision. "Wouldn't have, though. If every damn machine in that room hadn't suddenly gone haywire. Like a short-circuit or something. Weird, but lucky. If we hadn't all come rushing in there..."

"Yes, well," Lawrence interrupted. "I just wanted to inform you that they've both been asking for the other man - Spike? If you could pass that along I'd appreciate it. He's had a rather disruptive effect, frankly, and if it continues he won't be allowed back -"

"He won't be coming back," Angel said. He was struck, all at once by the absurdity of it all. "It's over now. It's all over."

Part 12: Goodnight Normal

Another Saturday morning, another breakfast at Lola's. At least today Buffy was doing justice to the meal. "The Slayer stomach strikes again," Dawn observed. "Nice to see."

Buffy examined her ravaged plate. "I think superhuman strength agrees with me," she decided.

"Really?" Dawn studied her apprehensively. She'd been waiting, Buffy knew, for a return of the rattled and sore shell of the Buffy three years past. How to tell Dawn that she didn't have the heart to hate herself anymore?

At length she reached a hand across the table, linking her fingers with Dawn's. "I'm glad to be here," she said, and Dawn's expression brightened and relaxed, dissolving tension that Buffy now only noticed by its departure.

"Me too."

They tucked into their food again. "Is it hard to get back into the routine? Of slaying?" Dawn asked around a mouthful of pancake.

Buffy snorted rather indelicately. "What slaying? There isn't a vamp to be found in the city. Spike must be patrolling all night, every night."

Dawn gave her a pointed look, which Buffy ignored. It had taken everything she had to convince Dawn not to promptly stake out Spike's apartment when they were released from Fairview. The rent was being paid and the dog was being fed (information courtesy of a singularly awkward conversation with Angel) and Spike had sworn he was no longer beholden to her. Granted, that had been before his most recent and monumental self-sacrifice on their behalf, but she had a feeling that the words still held a place between them.

They'd changed the rules somewhere along the way, and Buffy was glad but she wasn't sure whether they'd settled on family or fuck off. She knew which one she'd chosen. Spike, however, wasn't around to make his opinion on the subject known.

Of course, that didn't mean she couldn't look for him. Discreetly. "I want to come with," Dawn cajoled that night, as Buffy shoved stakes and a brand-new hand axe into the Lulu Guinness messenger bag she'd picked up at a sample sale downtown. Angel, upon escorting the sisters home from the hospital, had taken one look around their apartment and written Buffy a check. At first she'd considered the idea of Angel-as-sugar-daddy to be too, too weird, but after the dozenth tight-lipped lecture on why Spike should have let she and Dawn die in their beds, she felt much more inclined to spend his money.

The fact that Angel was very likely right didn't soften her stance. So easy for him to say that Spike should have kept his gift and condemned Dawn. So very fair and just and honorable. But afterlife ethics left Buffy cold, weighed against the girl beside her.

"I don't want to spook him," Buffy countered. "And you said you saw him the other night, outside that club as you left."

"Yeah, but he took off before I could collar him."

"Collar him? Who are you, Jack Bauer?" That necessitated a collective moment of silence in honor of the hotness that was Kiefer, but Dawn quickly resumed her badgering.

"I don't want to lose him again, Buffy!"

She'd flounced off before they could talk it out, although Buffy had successfully shoved several bills into Dawn's pocket for cab fare. She briefly relished the irony that Angel's cash was now helping to keep Dawn safe. Not that he would have objected, she knew. But Buffy had accepted, at last, that Angel's glacial and elevated worldview didn't mesh with hers. Not when it came to the people she loved.

So it was that a week to the day after her eyes had flown open as she lay among stiffly starched hospital linens, after she'd felt the ancient energy zinging again through sinew and bone, she now stood at the mouth of a squalid alleyway while at the other end, Spike danced with death.

When he had staked the last vamp, she clapped. He whirled around.

"Sorry," she said. "Couldn't resist."

He scowled at her but she stepped forward anyway, until they were nearly toe-to-toe. "Hi," she said. "I'm Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

He nodded. "I'm Spike, the vampire."

"That's the rumor. Not that we found out firsthand, since you haven't been by."

"I have," he said, and then seemed to reconsider. "I've been...around."

"Around? Is that Spike-speak for spying on us from the sidewalk? There's a tree outside our bathroom window, if you'd like to stand outside it all night. We don't have a basement anymore, but Dawn's offered to chain you up in the storage locker. She seemed pretty enthusiastic about the idea, actually."

"Said quite a few nasty things to her. Things I'd thrash anybody else for saying. I imagine she's right pissed with me about now."

"Well, yeah, but not the way you think. Mostly she just misses the man who saved her life."

"Not a man anymore. Not too broken up about it either, so you might as well save the sermon for someone who cares. Maybe the Moral Majority bloodsucker would be interested."

"Angel? I think he's sorry enough for all of us." Spike's snark almost, but not quite, concealed the hurt beneath. Angel's disgust with the whole situation had been apparent from the start, but his rage at Spike had taken even Buffy aback. He and Spike had built a hard-won friendship over the past year, and she sensed they both felt its loss keenly.

"Yeah? And what about you?" He rolled his shoulders, slipping - with no small amount of relief, she thought - into the role of Big Bad. "Come to cry over my corpse?"

"I wish...I wish you hadn't lost what you did. You'd earned it. But I don't care whether or not you breathe or show up in the hall mirror. You're here. That's all I ever -"

"Liar," he hissed.

"No!"

"You want some groveling housebroken vamp and even that won't be enough, not for long." Suddenly he was in her face, gripping her arms in a way that would have been painful and bruising just a few days ago. Tawny eyes raked over her. He bent his head and she felt fangs nip warningly at her neck.

"This is me," he grunted. "Animal. Monster. You think you can tame me? You turn me more savage than ever. You come near and all I know is fucking, fighting, protecting what's mine. I saw you and got so hard, needing to be inside you, pound you against that wall or the fire escape or the ground, doesn't matter. You do that to me." Abruptly he pushed her off. "I can't love you halfway, Buffy. I can't be with you and Dawn and not be with you; tried to make you understand that. I'm the thing in the dark corner of your sweet bedroom, I'm the vampire that won't regret it because it makes me strong enough to love you." His voice cracked. "And you never wanted that before so why would you now?"

She stayed where he'd left her, refusing to back down or advance. "You don't know," Buffy said tightly. "You don't know how I mourned you when you were gone. You, Spike. Animal. Monster. Is it so hard to believe? That I could love you as you are?"

He snarled at her, acting deliberately, she knew, his most feral and demonic. "I see, then. You fancy you're doing some good turn, looking past my unfortunate defects. You'll leave the room when I feed, you'll cover up the windows of your sad little flat. You'll settle. Christ, you really think I want to go back to that? You and me, sharing one life between us?" She could sense his fervor growing with each word, heard the choking despair and frustration she remembered too well.

"You can't imagine what it's like, Buffy. Being a slave to this - this thing between us. After time and miles and telling myself things were changed, I was changed and then finding that I'm still helpless. Weak. That meeting with the Powers - that was the easy part. Could do that every day with a smile on my face. But watching you turn away? Over and over again?"

He broke off. "Be ready again, in a bit. Soon. Just now...I'm tired."

And Buffy understood that. The weariness of duty, because there had been a time when she had felt nothing else. Spike's compulsion was Buffy, just as hers had been the world. And he would return to it, just as she would, but the dread rolled off him in waves and it broke her heart that had been so lately mended. She had to tread carefully, knowing what she did now about the vulnerability beneath Spike's façade of ambivalence.

But he wasn't going to get a free pass, either, not from her. And she suspected that bluntness would do more than pale denials and her chafing heedless claims of "It'll be better. I swear."

"Give me some credit," she told him. He frowned.

"I stood by while you sneered at us, called us names and acted like we were too silly and stupid to even breathe the same air as you. It wasn't easy, Spike. And yeah, I didn't keep it up very long 'cause of the unexpected roadkill factor, but I was proving it to you. And maybe it's wrong to be mad when you saved my life and Dawn's but I am. What were you thinking?"

"What was I supposed to think?" he shot back. "Years we've been going through the same old shit. I come over all human-y one morning and suddenly I'm the man of your dreams."

"You were the man of my dreams for a long time before that," she replied rigidly. "You just weren't around to see it. You were off in L.A., 'moving on' and 'starting over' and probably shagging that - that freakishly tall genius-girl!"

"Shagging - are you talking about Fred?"

"She's all sweet and breakable and I bet she knows all that stuff you used to try to talk to me about when I'd pretend I was asleep -"

"I'm not having sex with Fred!"

"And I'm smart too, you know. I went to college - for a while - and I help Dawn..." She lost steam, peering at him suspiciously. "No?"

He allowed his body to slide down the wall until he was sitting on the ground, gangly limbs sprawled haphazard across the pavement. Buffy stood over him.

"We could have died. Dawn and I could have died and we would have lost our last chance. And did I mention the part about us being dead?" Piqued, she couldn't help but deliver a not-so-gentle prod with her foot. "What would you have done then?"

He looked up at her, his gaze matter-of-fact and resigned. In this, she saw, he was no longer unsure. The day she and Dawn died would be Spike's last, living or unliving. He would have finally consented to join them, be at their sides in death despite what she suspected was his conviction that they wouldn't be spending eternity in the same place. Flattering and tragic, definitely, and as grand gestures went it ranked pretty high. But she was utterly sick of sacrifice.

Spike drew his knees up, propped his bent elbows on them. He looked staggeringly young, but Buffy knew every contour of his face and noticed lines that hadn't been there before. The very faintest valleys across his brow, that would deepen and then recede as he shifted in and out of game face. They'd never disappear entirely, though. His stint of humanity was marked on him now, through these keepsakes of their ordeal. She knew without a doubt he'd treasure them as war wounds. And in a small secret place inside her, Buffy would as well.

"I'm not sorry I did it," he said. "And I won't be weeping over my lost humanity anytime soon. I make a good vampire, you know. Only thing I was ever really good at."

Kneeling beside him, she waited until he met her eyes. "You bought Dawn's life with your own. Did you think I'd be angry? That I'd send you away, after all this?"

"What about you? You were normal. Happy. I took all that 'cause I couldn't bear to watch you - again -"

"Newsflash, Spike. I didn't want to die. I mean, yeah, there was a time a couple of years ago when I wanted to be dead, but there's a subtle difference between the two and besides, I got over it. And if you think I've been happy lately? Wait'll you see what's in store."

Such a temptress she was; she must have known that her joy was his own, that her laughter carried with it all that he'd been seeking for so long.

"How can you be sure? That I'm what you want?"

"Who I want. And I had a lot of time to reflect on the subject. You can stay or go but you can't make that decision for me. I won't stop caring if you walk out of our lives." She laid her cheek on his arm. "It's not about the packaging, Spike. That doesn't matter to me anymore. It's about all the things you've done that brought you to this point. Those things haven't gone away just because you're a vampire again. I love your journey and your destination."

She took his face in her hands, so lightly. A tender touch was not what he expected from her.

"Won't you come home?" she asked him.

"Come..."

She tugged him up. "Home," she repeated. "Your home. Our home."

Home. With warm loving girls inside and arms that would gather him close. It was what he had wanted, always wanted since before he'd become Spike and was merely, unfortunately William. And the fact that he was getting what he wanted - after this long year of asceticism and the still-raw image of Buffy in a hospital bed while machines breathed for her and the desperate deal he'd made with the Powers - the fact that Spike was getting what he wanted made him tense and prickly. He didn't answer her.

She led him out of the alley and he followed, but at a distance; wary of her gentleness and the unfamiliar sheen around her that resembled wisdom. Hope was the thing with feathers, after all, and though she wouldn't recognize the speaker he wondered now if she might not appreciate the sentiment.

The apartment was quiet and dark when she opened the door. He folded his arms defensively as she invited him in, but it didn't seem to bother her in the least. Rather, her face seemed to light up, he'd say in anticipation if that wasn't so bloody incredible.

Of course, being Buffy, she took 'incredible' and turned it on its head. "This is the beginning," she said. "I won't forget this moment. This invitation."

"Not even if you have to revoke it someday?" he asked.

"You won't let that happen." She sat him on their ratty couch, and it sunk in then how colorless her life had been. Oh, he'd seen the signs before but refused to accept them. She'd been lonely, withdrawn from the world. And the idea that his presence, as cruel and hurtful as it was, had somehow revitalized her was astonishing. Humbling. Grinding him down into powder but at the same time showing him the power he wielded. He hadn't known. He hadn't known.

Restless, he stood and prowled the apartment. "Where's Dawn?" he asked.

"Out." Buffy smiled wryly. "You'd probably know where better than I would."

Yeah, he did, and he felt far more capable of dealing with that than with just about anything else. He was lost, off-balance from the last few days. Confusion had settled deep in his marrow and there was no frame of reference for whatever came next.

Then he looked into the kitchen, where Buffy was puttering around. Doing easy, ordinary things like putting away dishes and wiping down the countertop and before he realized what he was doing he found himself on his knees before her. His arms wrapped around her and his head pressed close against her stomach. Surprise didn't keep her from raking her fingers through his hair, crooning soothing meaningless words meant to comfort.

"I was so scared," he rasped. "You were lying there, they said you were already gone and what if I couldn't fix it? What if it was like last time? What if -"

He'd failed. Again.

"Shhh, Spike. You didn't. You saved us. Me and Dawn both." But he was caught up in the memories, lashed to his own guilt.

His hands roamed over her body, fingers splayed across her abdomen and then under the waistband of her jeans. He tugged mindlessly and then her hands covered his, freeing the buttons and dragging the material down. She gasped and shuddered when his mouth found her, his tongue tracing her through thin cotton. He felt her legs buckle as he backed her against the cabinets and gripped the back of her thighs, holding her steady. Wouldn't let her fall this time.

"Oh..." A low, hoarse cry from deep inside her, and she was pulling him up. "My bedroom. I mean - do you...? Only if you're sure -"

"Yes. God, it was too close, too close..." The agony was fresh in him, so hard to reconcile with her healthy-hot flesh. Then when he found himself in her room, feasting on her with his eyes as she undressed him and then herself, other memories surfaced. This act had been shame and resentful release for her before, slow shriveling defeat for him. He was frantic to take her but even as he crawled forward onto the bed something cowardly inside him hesitated. He buried his face in her hair. She knew nonetheless.

"We're making something different." The vow was shaky and choked: she was weeping. He brought his hand to her face in wonderment, fingers following the tracks of moisture.

Is it really you? he wanted to ask, but instead what came out was, "Is it really me?"

She smiled through her tears. "Yes. It's you. Still, always."

His fingers drifted down, to the signal fire at her center. "This is my home." He couldn't keep the question from his voice.

In response she arched beneath him. "Come inside," she murmured. Running those small dear hands up and down his hips encouragingly, but he didn't enter her. He was aching with it, torn between their past and the primal need to possess.

"You don't trust me yet, do you?" she asked softly.

His love for her was, forever, rooted and irrefutable. But trust had been bled out of him. They were still moving together fluidly, his cock impatient and his demon straining at the leash. She shifted upwards again but then paused, raising her lips to his ear.

"I want to do something we've never done before."

A hundred scenarios raced through his mind, and just as many didn't because he and Buffy had been diligent in their pursuit of the depraved during that awful-beautiful year. He wasn't feeling too inventive at the moment, but he supposed -

Blood. One instant the air around them had held nothing but the competing perfumes of Buffy's soap and shampoo and own heavy musk; the next the unmistakable, undeniable rich scent overwhelmed him. He thought at first that it was his, because hell, these days it usually was. But no, this was infinitely headier and more vibrant.

"Fuck -! Buffy, love -" He pulled back, eyes raking over her body in an attempt to find out where she was bleeding from and how; how he'd managed to damage her already and fuck, fuck, fuck...

Except the minx was smiling at him. With just a hint of mischief in the curve of her lips and he couldn't help it, he was rocking even more furiously against her as panic sunk its claws in his heart.

"What have you done?" He took her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "Idiot girl, what have you done?"

"It's okay," she was saying, but he'd finally found the ragged, self-inflicted cut and the underside of one breast. For too long - a few seconds that stretched into eternity - he simply stared. Blood welled enticingly against her satin skin, and he wanted nothing more than to latch on and never let go, never ever let go...

"Let me give this to you. Please, Spike. You want it and I have it and it can be good."

He shook his head jerkily. "I got it, yeah? You made your point so just -" He forced his attention away, to the tiny sliver of light that peeked beneath her bedroom door, to the starkness of the white walls, to anything that wasn't her ripe loveliness and its cardinal path leading down, down to his destruction.

"You can take what I'm offering. It's not a test."

"Yes, it is. It is." He was harder than he'd ever been before; not from the prospect of her blood but from the offer. His hands fisted, bunching the sheets around them. "You think I'm like Angel? You think I'm gonna nobly restrain myself? I told you -"

"I heard what you told me. I listened, Spike. And I want to give this to you." She lifted her hand and painted his lips with her gift. "Animal. Monster. You're welcome in this bed."

He was faltering, and she made it sound so simple and when he dared to glance up he saw that she craved this as badly as he did. And he couldn't make sense of it. He dropped his forehead down to hers.

"I don't know how to be loved," he whispered.

For some reason that started her tears flowing again. She brought his head down to her breast. "That's okay," she whispered back. "I'll teach you. Like you taught me."

He closed his eyes, surrendered.

It was ecstasy, sacred and carnal at the same time. He suckled at her as her arousal surged and filled the air around them. It was like it had never been, since even his first night in darkness. It was his first taste of heaven.

Her muscles went taut around him, the pleasure ramping up mercilessly. A single thrust and he was inside her, all the way, raising his head to watch. Little soundless moans escaped her as he moved, fingers pinching one crimson-stained nipple.

"Am I yours?"

So strange that the plea came from her and not him. He cradled her head in one hand, marveled at how the fragile skull fit into his palm. "Your breath is my blood," he gasped. "I am yours."

She climaxed, capturing his mouth while her gaze never strayed from his face. And the way her eyes got so wide, the way she brought her own wavering hand up to meet his at the spot he'd fed from, the way she tilted her hips to draw him further in so he could feel each tremor from the inside out - it was all too brilliant and wonderful to be sustained. He drove into her harder - and oh, she was still coming, still - and finally emptied himself. He didn't stop moving, though; not until she reached for him again and he nestled, spent and suffused with a foreign peace.

When they spoke, it was promises of love only they could understand. Commandments etched in the stone of their shattered language.

***************************************

Buffy woke up alone. To the sound of - shouting? She retrieved her robe from the floor and rose.

"I can't believe you! You totally embarrassed me in front of my date!"

"Your date? You mean the drummer with his tongue down your throat? I'm overcome with remorse. Too bad - ow! Watch the bloody bootheels, will you?"

"You think just 'cause you're back to screwing my sister I'll fall in line too?" Dawn scrubbed at glistening, reddened eyes as she glared at Spike. "You can't make me do anything."

"Oh, no? I'm about to make you wish you'd never set foot out the house tonight!"

It was an impressive thing, really, the ability they had to reduce one another to screams and curses in mere minutes.

"Please. Like I don't know you guys were having the Official Reconciliation Boinkfest while I was gone. What do you even care, anyway?"

"What kind of imbecilic question is that?"

"Look, you got what you came here for. You can go back to pretending I don't exist." Grabbing her purse from where it had been flung onto the kitchen table, she turned. Spike was already there, though, and whatever she'd been about to say next was lost forever as he pulled her to him. A short scuffle, more for appearance's sake than anything else. Then Dawn was sobbing openly in his arms. It seemed like the conclusion they'd both been hoping for.

He picked her up and carried her to the couch, and she burrowed into his lap. He let her, wrapping one arm loosely around her shoulders while she cried and railed at him.

"Bastard! You're such a bastard! We needed you and you left!"

"Never forgive myself for it, sweet. But it won't happen again. Gonna shadow you and Big Sis 'til you can't abide me any longer." He kissed the top of her head and although he must have sensed Buffy's presence his attention never left Dawn.

"Bastard." There was little heat behind the word. Eventually she quieted, and Spike risked a chuckle as she wiped her nose on his shirt. "There's my wee beastie. Knew you'd give me what I had coming."

"I'm so going to kick your ass." She hiccuped and nestled closer. "Later."

"Sounds like a plan. How're the innards?"

"Gross. And...good as new." She glanced up at him sheepishly. "That was the deal, right?"

"You heard about that?"

"Duh, Spike. I'm not a little kid anymore. Not that I ever, technically, was..." She continued to stare. "You really gave it all up to save me?"

"That's right. You owe me your life, you vindictive little brat. And don't think I won't collect."

"Okay." She twisted around, until their noses were almost touching. "I never thought you would. For me, I mean."

"I know."

"Are you mad at me?"

"For staying out until four in the morning with a garage-band reject? Hell, yes. For the other, no. You recall when I taught you poker." He gave her a sly look and a nudge. "I walked out of that meeting with a winning hand, Bit."

"Well," she said, "you did get to keep the dog."

"That's the spirit."

Shifting, she settled herself next to him on the couch while he reached for the television remote. Digging a candy bar out of her purse, she offered him half. He broke off all but a few bites and began flipping channels, not bothering to evade her vigorous kicks.

"What about the soul?" she went on, popping chocolate in her mouth. "Did they let you keep that too?"

Spike froze, and now his eyes did seek out Buffy's. She smiled and crossed the room.

Dawn looked from Buffy to Spike and rolled her eyes. "Oh, sorry. Forgot I'm not supposed to use the s-word around here. Sheesh."

Buffy shrugged, plucking the remote from Spike's slack fingers. "The topic hasn't actually come up." Seeing that Spike had apparently lost interest in his food, she relieved him of that as well. "Tell me about the drummer."

"Vlad? He's funny, and his biceps are highly pleasing, and hey - he stayed upright the whole time Spike was threatening to remove all his internal organs. Bonus."

"I don't know," Spike blurted out. Dawn and Buffy turned to him.

"I can't - I can't tell if it's there or not. The soul."

Dawn yawned and sank back into the cushions. "Does it feel like anything's missing?" she asked reasonably.

He sat up and surveyed them, his two sleepy candy-coated girls. Dawn's head had drifted to his shoulder and for the first time he saw that Buffy's little feet were perched comfortably on his legs. The sofa was too small, he thought inanely. He wanted them never to replace it.

And he could even now hear the danger encroaching, if he listened hard enough; darkness drawn to the Slayer and the vampire and the still-sparkling Key. Could hear, too, Angel's admonishments about Spike's nature, about the mess and destruction that dogged his every step.

It didn't matter.

"No," he answered finally. "Everything's right where it should be."

***************************************

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

The End.